Similarities And Differences Between Academic Centers For .

uncommon for both activities to be combined under the jointtitle of “innovation and entrepreneurship centers” or as uniqueprograms within an innovation center. Though new to academia, innovation centers in industry are well-establishedmechanisms that assemble diverse teams and converge on solutions [4].An academic makerspace serves as a meeting place for a university’s maker community and provides resources to design,fabricate, and evaluate engineered systems. In addition to being physical spaces, makerspaces are operational units that offer education, training, and certification programs to teachnew skills. The specifics of each academic makerspace, including focus, access, and staffing, vary with each institution.These spaces typically include traditional and modern manufacturing equipment, as well as digital design tools, to supportthe academic, extracurricular, and personal design activitiesof university students, faculty, and staff. In academic makerspaces, community members formally and informally learnfrom one another in a variety of classroom, workshop, andopen-studio formats [5].While presented as individual activities, elements of entrepreneurship, innovation, and making can be incorporated into thework of a single center or be the sole focus of a center. Thefollowing sections present examples where multiple singlefocused centers exist at a university as well as cases whereelements of entrepreneurship, innovation, and making are integrated into a single center.ACADEMIC CENTERS FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP,INNOVATION AND MAKING AS MULTIPLE SINGLEFOCUSED ENTITIESThree institutions are presented where multiple single-focused centers support entrepreneurship, innovation, or making. Embedded in this discussion are centers that supportstartup accelerators and incubators. These terms are somewhat interchangeable but also non-uniformly applied by allinstitutions. Accelerators generally work with startups forshorter periods of time (for example, up to six months) as thehosted companies raise their first rounds of funding. Commercial accelerators frequently provide capital (for example, 100,000) and are paid for their services with a small (lessthan 10%) amount of ownership in the company. A startupincubator normally does not provide capital, is generallylonger-term (up to two years), and is not compensated withownership. Incubators are common mechanisms at universities to provide space and mentorship for new ventures.The Schwartz Center for Entrepreneurship at CarnegieMellon University (established in 2015) supports entrepreneurship education, collaboration, and experiential learningopportunities for the entire university community. Led by anexecutive director and two faculty co-directors, the centerprovides programs and activities for CMU’s students, faculty,and staff. The center assists students who are transformingconcepts into startups, provides mentorship and funding resources, and hosts lectures, competitions, and networkingevents related to innovation and entrepreneurship. Experiential learning programs, including workshops and internshipsfor undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, and youngfaculty members, help individuals commercialize products.The center also hosts an incubator and supports academiccourses and degrees.Also servicing the entire university, the CMU Integrative Design, Arts & Technology Network (IDeATe) provides interdisciplinary courses, space, and resources for CMU’s makercommunity [6]. IDeATe (opened in 2014) is housed in theuniversity library where 10,000 square feet of space is provided for lectures, collaboration, fabrication, equipment use,and program administration. Interdisciplinary courses (without prerequisites) are open to all students. IDeATe supportscollaborations with 30 new courses focused on hands-onlearning for students from different disciplines. Led by theuniversity librarian and an associate dean (Civil and Environmental Engineering professor), the center includes technical,digital, and design staff members.The VentureLab at the Georgia Institute of Technologyhelps students and faculty create startups based on GA Techresearch. The lab (established in 2001) partners with externalorganizations to provide early-stage funding, offers academiccourses in entrepreneurship (where students validate marketneeds and build functional prototypes), and provides entrepreneurship programming/guidance. The lab uses a five-stagemodel (ideation, customer discovery, customer validation,customer creation, and company building) as a core processfor most of their offerings. The lab is led by a director anddoes not include departmental faculty in its leadership. VentureLab is a component of the much larger GA Tech Enterprise Innovation Institute, an institute-wide program that promotes business and industry collaborations, technology commercialization, and economic development.The Georgia Institute of Technology Invention Studio(founded in 2009) is a student-managed academic makerspaceopen to the entire university [6]. The studio provides trainingand access to equipment, serves as a cultural hub for the campus making community, and supports curricular and extracurricular design instruction to increase collaboration and incorporate diverse ideas in problem-solving. A student organization manages and staffs the facility. The students are assisted by faculty members and a professional staff for oversight, logistics support, and equipment maintenance. In addition to training and guidance, the Invention Studio also offersworkshops and other outreach activities to teach skills andconnect the GA Tech community.The Yale Entrepreneurial Institute (YEI, founded in 2007)helps students and faculty start businesses through mentorship, programming, and funding support. The YEI offers asummer fellowship program where students refine their ideas,conduct market surveys, improve their products, and pursuefunding. An innovation fund is available, as well as a mentorship program that connects teams to volunteers. The institutealso provides programming focused on entrepreneurship, networking events, and access to legal, branding, and financialservices. Yale recently announced the creation of the TsaiCenter for Innovative Thinking at Yale, a new universitywide resource to provide programming, guidance, mentorship, and training that will help diverse teams create innovative solutions to challenging problems. The student-focusedYEI activities will be one of a few existing programs relocated

to the new center. The new center will be led by an executivedirector and a faculty co-director.The Yale Center for Engineering Innovation and Design(CEID) is an academic makerspace available to all students,faculty and research staff at Yale [6]. The CEID opened in2012 and offers design classes, workshops, and training sessions that empower users to convert ideas into functional devices. With an open studio, machine shops, meeting rooms,lecture space, and wet lab, the CEID promotes design-basedcollaborations among its users to support curricular, co-curricular, and extra-curricular activities and projects. In additionto benefitting those in the engineering disciplines, the centerhas also played a key role introducing engineering as an academic consideration for other disciplines at the undergraduateand graduate levels. A director and staff of two design facultymembers and two design fellows, aided by student employees, teach skills, provide guidance, and oversee operationswithin the space.ACADEMIC CENTERS FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP,INNOVATION AND MAKING AS INTEGRATED ENTITIESThree institutions are presented where centers exist to supporta combination of entrepreneurship, innovation, and making.In these examples, a primary focus is established (as indicatedin the name or principle description of the space) with the additional function(s) integrated to support the primary function.The Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology provides the “expertise, support and connections MIT students need to becomeeffective entrepreneurs, serving all MIT students, across allschools and disciplines” [7]. The center (established in 1990)is operated by the MIT Sloan School of Management and offers programs, courses, infrastructure, events, and outreachactivities that advance MIT’s entrepreneurial activities. Thecenter is led by a managing director and faculty chair/founder.The most significant components of the center are its programs, which include a three-month (summer-long) educational accelerator where students are provided space, stipends,structure, and status to explore their potential market, buildprototypes, create partnerships, and find customers. In 2016,86 students on 17 teams participated in this program.A collection of programs provides exposure to entrepreneurial activities in the fall and progresses to programs that requireincreased levels of commitment at the start of the calendaryear, followed by a full-time commitment to participate in thecenter’s accelerator program during the summer. Creatively,the center’s annual programs begin at the start of the schoolyear with a demonstration festival of the summer-long projects. The center also helps maintain a culture for entrepreneurship on campus by providing guidance and support (suchas meeting space) for student-initiated events related to entrepreneurship.A recent renovation of the center expanded the makerspacefacilities within the center in recognition that many of the entrepreneurial projects involve building devices. The space ismanaged using a dedicated staff that provides training, mentoring, and workshops related to technology located in thespace. The presence of this space accelerated the developmentof an academic course (Introduction to Making) hosted by thecenter. In this example, we see maker capabilities amplifiedwithin an entrepreneurship/innovation space to better supportthe design, experimentation, and prototyping needs of studentstartups. Key to this development is the realization that themaker capabilities support the entrepreneurial activities.Case Western Reserve University’s Sears think[box] was established in 2012 to facilitate multidisciplinary collaboration,promote innovative thinking, support making and building,and advance product development and venture creation. Thecenter is open to all students as well as the Cleveland community, with twenty percent of its visitors coming from the localcommunity. Think[box] combines makerspace equipment,collaboration programming, startup guidance, and incubationspace within the same physical and organizational structure.The seven floors of the facility have been designed to supportmeeting and brainstorming, collaborating, rapid prototyping,advanced manufacturing, assembling, entrepreneurship, andcommercialization, with a floor dedicated to each step of theprocess. For example, the 6th floor of the facility will supportentrepreneurship education programs, including an intellectual property clinic, and the 7th floor will host incubatorspaces for products developed at the facility. Think[box] isled by an executive director (Mechanical Engineering facultymember) and has a faculty director.When the facility is fully occupied (the top three floors remainunder construction), think[box] will provide the full range ofservices to transform ideas into companies. This model of facilitating all aspects of the concept to corporation pipeline isunique in scope. In some ways, this facility is analogous tothe Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, thoughmaking is the driving factor at think[box]. The additional programs in entrepreneurship and startup acceleration are addedas a response to the need created from the primary forcingfunction (making).The Wond’ry at Vanderbilt University (opened in 2016) wascreated to support cross-disciplinary collaboration, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Programs at the Wond’ry partnerfaculty and students with local corporations to discover innovative business solutions, provide introductory and advancedexposure to the entrepreneurial process, and support socialventures with the assistance of the city of Nashville and localnon-profits. The Wond’ry advances the innovation culture oncampus by sponsoring workshops, supporting student organizations, and fostering collaborations. The center hosts academic courses (taught by departmental faculty from across theuniversity) on topics related to innovation, entrepreneurship,technology, and making. The center has an executive directorand a faculty advisory board.The facility includes a makerspace that provides tools andequipment needed for innovation. Training and oversight isprovided by mentors and making-centered events are held tostrengthen the campus making community and to promoteidea exchange. Like the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, the makerspace at the Wond’ry supports entrepreneurial developments, but it also has a primary purpose asa university-wide access point for making. In this example,

the entrepreneurial, innovation, and making functions haveunique and defined purposes (as opposed to centers where oneaspect is the primary purpose and the other aspects supportthat primary function). The social venture component of theWond’ry is especially significant for it signals the wide spectrum of venture activities supported by the center (comparedto most other programs that focus on commercial ventures).ACADEMIC CENTERS THAT COMBINEENTREPRENEURSHIP AND INNOVATION FUNCTIONSIf the makerspace component is not included when groupingthe combined centers, a much larger database of entrepreneurship and innovation centers results. This is driven by the pervasiveness of entrepreneurship centers in academia and an associated collection of entrepreneurship education (includingmajors, minors, and master programs) and entrepreneurshipresearch activities. Evidence of the significant role of entrepreneurship in academia is also reflected in the number ofgovernment studies, journals, non-profit organizations, andbooks that address these practices at colleges and universities[8,9,10,11]. Innovation centers however are a relatively newarrival on college campuses. These centers can include commercial

elements of entrepreneurship, innovation, and making are in-tegrated into a single center. ACADEMIC CENTERS FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP, INNOVATION AND MAKING AS MULTIPLE SINGLE-FOCUSED ENTITIES Three institutions are presented where multiple single-fo-cused centers support entrepreneurship, innovation, or mak-ing.